Chapter 197

Check out my new fic Sorcerer in DC. We're already 15 chapters deep, and it's an improvement on As Dante in Marvel.

"Get in there!" Shaw's voice roared over the speaker as he deactivated the mutant suppression device but kept the cage between us.

Thirty mutants flooded the room with a determination that quickly turned to apprehension when they saw their dead predecessors. In their eyes, I must be a big deal, all covered in blood and guts. Good. That fear might just save some of their lives.

A pregnant second passed before I acted. I contemplated showing them Domina's dead body before I tried oppressing them with my aura, but it'd make little difference now. We were well past the talking phase.

Demonic energy rolled out of me in waves as my hammer transformed into a longsword, and I stabbed it into the ground.

"Last chance to run," I said. "Whatever he's paying you can't be worth your lives. I'm not great at holding back."

"There's no need for this," Emma said in a soothing voice as our psychic planes connected, and it was like I'd known her for years. She was Aunty Emma, and I could be a hothead sometimes, but she was always there to rein me in. "Take your hand off the sword, honey. You're scaring them."

My fingers quivered, and I looked down at the blade, up at Emma and the rest of the Brotherhood, and then turned over to the Greater Demon and the mutants. They seemed tenser than ever.

"Okay," I said, vanishing the blade, and I could hear Emma let out a small, satisfied sigh, and Shaw shook his head.

"This is not a permanent fix, Shaw. You need a gentler hand if you want him—" 

The room exploded in motion, and ten mutants were pulped—bone, blood, and muscles scattered in every direction.

A third of Shaw's forces were gone in a blink. I transformed Rose from its hammer form back to a blade and slashed out, sending forth a wave of kinetic energy. It cleaved five more in half.

A third strike would've finished the rest of the group had a mutant not stopped me.

A wall of energy materialized, tanking the hit. The energy wrapped around the shield, carving deep rents through the concrete wall of the amphitheater. Not a moment later, the mutant dropped to the floor, covered in sweat, obviously exhausted from blocking the attack. A wave of mental energy descended upon me.

It had more teeth than anticipated, but compared to the squid and Wanda, it was a slap on the wrist.

I slurped up the mental energy and used it well, reinforcing the permanent barrier around my mind.

The mid-battle upgrade almost cost me because a powerful blow struck my flank. I looked up and came face-to-face with someone familiar.

"Aren't you that Creel guy who used to work for Domina?"

"Your asshole boss took everything from me!"

That wasn't how I heard it. I ducked under his follow-up punch and swiped at him, splitting him in half. I sent his corpse flying with a pulse of Burst at the group of three scrambling to mount a defense. One slammed his hand on the ground, and the world suddenly turned sideways.

I stumbled, my legs growing wobbly until I tried to absorb whatever energy they were trying to use to fuck up my sense of balance, but by then, it was too late. Stone sprang up from the ground, wrapping around me. A hand slammed into my chest, and my demonic energy levels suddenly dipped.

I looked up to see my father.

"You should've listened," Shaw said coldly to me. His eyes turned harsher when he saw the look of surprise on my face. He must've thought it was fear. My mind cycled through a myriad of emotions before settling on surprise.

"You're draining me?" I looked down at his hand.

"Yes, I am. We may share blood, but you're more beast than boy. You need to be re-educated," he sneered. "Do you know how your little tantrum cost me, especially with him here?" he said that other bit in a lower voice, eyes darting towards the Density monster.

"Did you even care about her? About me?" I asked him.

Shaw laughed. "You really are your mother's son. For all of your talent, you're awfully sentimental. Insisted on having you and put all of our plans in jeopardy," he shook his head. "Do you know how much she cost me? That you've cost me? She was lucky I did not kill her. But I suppose it all worked out in the end. If I had, you wouldn't be here right now."

"Thank you for making this easy."

He must've been dead for nearly a second before he realized it. His eyes wandered low to see my hand sticking out from his chest, sunk to the elbow. With a forceful yank, I stole back my power and most of his. My skin rippled as my adaptation worked its magic, simultaneously reinforcing my mind and body.

My father's mutation might've been powerful, but I didn't need mine to kill him.

"It is you who should've listened."

--

I drank in the night sky of Tokyo underneath the layers of my twilight Sentinel armor before speeding through the barrier separating Domina's Tower from the rest of the city. The sky turned blood red instantly, and I heard a thousand screeches.

Hundreds of demons poured out multiple entrances of the Tower, led by a demon I hadn't quite seen before.

He had dark, metallic skin and two massive wings jutting from his cloak. Behind him stood a hydra straight out of myth. Three large harpies cycled overhead. The Hydra heads gave off three distinct but potent affinities, each nearly mirroring the strength of the blood demon I faced earlier. Poison, Darkness, and Lightning.

I suppose I was well past the point of normal enemies.

The Harpy and Hydra had power that put Lumos to shame, but I was more concerned about the army. Ordinarily, it wouldn't be a problem, but when you added two upper-Cambion-level threats, the situation became dicey.

Angel's aura exploded out of me as I transformed. My wings grew larger, my muscles thrummed with energy, and the world slowed considerably.

I handed Jean two dozen bombs. Still, I wasn't concerned enough to change our plans. "I'll hold them back while you get to work."

She nodded, then looked out to the group. "Be careful."

"You know I always am," I smiled as she vanished, and I turned to the crowd. The army was made of Garok, some four-legged Earth Elementals, Harpies, or Dragon Newts and Drakes.

I flashed forward and kicked the largest demon I could see, activating all the runes on Invictus and ten others on my Twilight Sentinel Armor, transforming the battlefield into an arctic tundra. Hundreds perished, flash-freezing and shattering in a single moment.

Osiris came alive, and I swung out; hundreds of blades came raining down, cutting through the demons like wheat.

The cold winds suddenly whipped, and hundreds of wind blades descended from above, neutralizing most of my spectral shurikens.

The cloaked Harpy finally spoke.

"So, you're the one who took my grand daughter from me?"

I laughed. The Irony. I can't believe Domina convinced the Harpies to fight on her side. That bitch could've sold sand in the desert.

"Huh. Even six feet under, Isha has more pull than I expected."

"You've robbed three great factions of their prized candidates, this is no longer about that insipid little child," the Harpy said. "You've gained our attention, and we're going to make you wish you hadn't."

"Somehow, I'm not that worried."

The surviving backline charged, and the greater demons were immediately on me.

Their auras exploded out of their cloaks, and the three harpies dived from the air, spear first. I dodged all three with quick steps and teleported behind the breath attacks of the Hydra. It evaporated the Ice with a streak of lightning, poisoned the air, and deleted large sections of the skyscraper with its darkness attacks, along with half of the remaining army.

I barely missed the third attack, used the damage and time boost to teleport behind the first of the three harpies, and decapitated it with a Dimensional Slash. I chained it into a second and a third beheading and went after the leading Harpy next.

His body sped up at the very last second, flipping around, and the air exploded between us. It fucked up my edge alignment enough that the smirking demon dodged the blow entirely. He snapped his left hand and right, and two things happened simultaneously.

Hundreds of razor-sharp, wind-infused feathers came for me, and the air grew unbearably heavy with wind-aspected demonic energy. A crushing force descended on all sides. It was like standing inside a vice, and the robustness of my armor worked against me in this instance, making the pressure worse.

At the edge of my senses, I felt the Hydra turn my way, and all three of its mouths lit up with energy just as the pinions almost hit me. I tried teleporting, but the weight only increased. It stuffed down my mind and crushed my will, and for the first time in a long time, I felt disconnected from my energy.

But it lasted less than a fraction of a second. My inflated energy values and telepathy cut through the noise, and I recognized what was happening. Some type of weaponized Aura attack. Isha had hinted that it was possible, but it didn't do you much good unless you had an inordinate amount of Demon energy or were dealing with somebody with an undeveloped aura—i.e., me.

Angel energy gushed out of me, mixed with equal parts demonic energy. I exploded in a cascading wave of purple fire, blanketing and neutralizing the harpy attacks and executing the last of the demon army.

The Harpy King and the Hydra reeled back collectively, and I vanished, teleporting in front of the King with a swing. The air thickened like a wall and shattered as fire consumed it. Dozens of fireballs rocketed out of that explosion in a controlled barrage, arcing outward and twisting towards the Harpy.

He looked the faintest bit surprised before he slashed out with a pair of shortswords he produced from somewhere.

Wind blades arced out, destabilizing the fireballs and triggering a chain explosion. I vanished just in time to miss a beam of pure lightning that tore through the landscape.

Not a moment later, the Hydra finally decided to go airborne, flapping at me with surprising speed, poison, and Shadow wafting out of its ten-foot-long claws. I swung outwards with Osiris, parrying the attack with all of my runes working in tandem.

Its hand ruptured, fragments of claw, bone, and muscle flying. Burst threw me forward with a sonic boom, and I switched to Eryx, powering up a quarter of my impact runes. The dark fire churning around my fist flashed purple just before impact. The resulting explosion rocked the entire pocket realm and bathed the skyscraper in Anathema fire.